The story itself stands up fairly well considering how long ago it was written and Dracula himself is indeed worthy of being the first of the modern day vampires. Taking into account the "properness" and conservative sensibilities of the time in which the book was written the story is surprisingly menacing and creepy, although admittedly is quite mild compared to horror tales written in more modern times.

Dracula is told in a style common of the age in which it was written - that of a collection of letters, journals and telegrams which tell the story. The "properness" of the interactions and speech of the characters has a quaint old fashioned charm.

At 2 or 3 points, the story gets bogged down and spends too much time treading water before getting to the next plot point. At least 10% of the book could have been edited out and nothing important would have been left out. Towards the end I was silently shouting at them to just get up and go kill him and stop talking about it!

Still, apart from that it could have been 99.9% worse and still possessed more worth than Twilight.....